As You Go About Your Life, don't give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some within.

Transcription

1 Eckhart Tolle: from Practicing the Power of Now As You Go About Your Life, don't give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some within. FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND 1 / 6

2 The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. START LISTENING TO THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old audiotapes that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. be there as the witnessing presence. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: There is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind. So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of [ awareness] the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. AS YOU LISTEN TO THE THOUGHT, you feel a conscious presence your deeper self behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking. INSTEAD OF WATCHING THE THINKER, you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream a gap of no-mind. At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the 2 / 6

3 beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being. EMOTION: THE BODY'S REACTION TO YOUR MIND Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind or you might say a reflection of your mind in the body. MAKE IT A HABIT TO ASK YOURSELF: What's going on inside me at this moment? That question will point you in the right direction. But don't analyze, just watch. Focus your attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway into Being. 3 / 6

4 DIE TO THE PAST EVERY MOMENT Notice how often you are caught in past and future. To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. Break the old pattern of resisting the present and holding to past and future. Step out of time as often as possible. Realize deeply the present moment is all you ever have. AS YOU GO ABOUT YOUR LIFE, don't give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some within. [AS comments: Within means that within which every content arises;that within-ness of the inner body; and that withinness of the intimacy of presence, attention and awareness.] Feel the inner body even when engaged in everyday activities, especially when engaged in relationships or when you are relating with nature. Feel the stillness deep inside it. Keep the portal open. It is quite possible to be conscious of the Unmanifested throughout your life. You feel it as a deep sense of peace somewhere in the background, a stillness that never leaves you, no matter what happens out here. You become a bridge between the Unmanifested and the manifested, between God and the world. 4 / 6

5 ATTENTION NOW Please examine where your attention is at this moment. You are listening, or reading these words in a book. That is the focus of your attention. You are peripherally aware of your surroundings, other people, and so on. Furthermore, there may be some mind activity around what you are hearing or reading, some mental commentary. Yet, there is no need for any of this to absorb all your attention. See if you can be in touch with your inner body at the same time. Keep some of your attention within: don t let it all flow out. Feel your whole body from within, as a single field of energy. It is almost as if you were listening or reading with your whole body. Let this be your practice in the days and weeks to come. IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions associated with the activity: the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap, and so on. Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the 5 / 6

6 degree of peace that you feel within. The single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: Learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. BEING AND ENLIGHTENMENT There is an eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death I often call it Being. Being is your very presence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence. So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being. BEING IS NOT ONLY BEYOND BUT ALSO DEEP WITHIN every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable, indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around you. 6 / 6